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 < back to authors list Bill Masterton:
Masterton is modest about all of his accomplishments, including his bestselling textbook, Chemical Principles, co-authored by Emil Slowinski, and first published in 1966. It has sold more than one million copies. "I would like to think that the success reflected the fact that I write clearly and succinctly and that Emil knows what he's talking about," Masterton said. "However, there was considerable luck involved. Our original text hit the market at exactly the right time." It was actually the second edition that made Masterton and Slowinski household words in the college chemistry community. "The first edition was a modest success," Masterton said. "The second took off. And subsequent editions succeeded beyond our wildest dreams." In 1989, when Slowinski retired from textbook writing after 23 years, Masterton hooked up with Cecile Hurley and are now in the second edition of Chemistry: Principles and Reactions. Masterton has published only with W.B. Saunders, now Saunders College Publishing. "The people at Saunders have been enormously helpful," he says. He especially credits John Vondeling, a Saunders' editor with whom he has worked the past 25 years. He settled early on chemistry for his career, earning a bachelor's degree in chemistry from the University of New Hampshire in 1949 and a doctorate in physical chemistry from the University of Illinois in 1953. In 1955 he joined the Connecticut faculty and spent his entire academic career in Storrs, retiring in 1987. He taught general chemistry and a graduate course in chemical thermodynamics. Grandkids and syrup At 68, Bill Masterton says, life is good. He credits Loris, his wife of 42 years, for much that has gone right in his life. His son Fred, born in 1955, is a chemical engineer, and his son Reynold, born in 1958, is a lawyer. He revels in his four grandchildren, who range from two to ten. "The 9-year-old is perhaps the only child of that age in the world whose favorite food is steamed clams," grandpa Masterton says. He takes pride in retaining the New England farmhouse, in Center Conway, New Hampshire, that has been in his family more than a century. He disappears there regularly to tend to the maple trees and make syrup. Making syrup he calls one of his "obsessions." A retirement project is the Lizzie Borden murder case--"Lizzie Borden took an ax..." "I'm working on the definitive book, which will, I am sure, clarify the century-old mystery," he says, with a twinkle. "The chances are that, given another 10 years of comparative lucidity, I will be able to finish the treatise." — reported by Kim Pawlak, 1997 |
